Companies Wary of Web 2.0

By Greg McNevin

June 23, 2008: According to a new survey of IT decision makers, there is a lot of caution surrounding the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in the workplace, due largely to concerns about security and proper usage.

Conducted by CDW, the survey found that 40 percent of decision makers across the government and corporate sectors have rolled out Web 2.0 tools, but most of the remaining majority are hesitant.

According to the survey, 31 percent worry that Web 2.0 will be used for personal use over work, 28 percent are concerned about information security and 27 percent worry about employees wasting time.

As a term, Web 2.0 is aligned with enhancing creativity, information sharing and collaboration among users, with some of the best examples being web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, wikis and blogs.

While these realms can indeed help creativity and collaboration flourish, as we see with the facebook conundrum there are often just as many good reasons for companies to shy away from Web 2.0 tools as embrace them – but this is changing.

“Organisations are recognising the clear advantages of Web 2.0, even though there has been some hesitation among IT decision makers to adopt these tools,” said CDW Vice President Mark Gambill.

“With the increased use of Web 2.0 functions like social networking and blogging as business tools, corporations are starting to re-evaluate tried and true ways of communicating.”

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